DOJ Seeks Forfeiture of Bitcoin Tied to ‘Chaos’ Ransomware Group

The US Department of Justice said on Monday that it is trying to take the ownership of $ 2.3 million to Bitcoin seized from a member of Chaos, a newly identified Ransomware group.

The United States law firm for the Northern district of Texas submitted a civil complaint last week in search of the forfeiture of 20.3 Bitcoin. In one press releaseIt described the funds as the alleged yield of money laundering and ransomware attacks.

Members of the Dallas Division of the FBI seized the Bitcoin in mid -April. The coins are said to be bound by ‘Hors’, a member of the Chaos group that is related to various attacks, including those against residents of the Lone Star State, the authorities said.

Authorities were able to grab the Bitcoin with the help of a recovery seed through Electrum, a Bitcoin portion that debuted in 2011, according to a civil complaint. The funds are currently being held in a wallet controlled by the government, it added.

The government’s statement about how the funds are linked to criminal activities, together with the underlying offenses, was detailed “under seal as a very sensitive document”.

A spokesperson for the office of the American lawyers for the Northern district of Texas refused to comment Decryptstating the case as current lawsuits.

Bitcoin affiliated with the infamous Silk Road market is the biggest appetite of the government, consisting of 69,370 Bitcoin that would be worth $ 8.2 billion today. In January, the government received Approval to start liquidating the forfeited funds.

Chaos come forward Already in February, according to cyber security company Cisco Talos. After coding data on the computer of a victim, members of the group often demand a ransom payment and threaten to announce confidential information they have collected.

Chaos is described as a ransomware-as-a-service group and offers platform-dependent software that is supposedly compatible with Windows, ESXI, Linux and NAS systems.

Although Ransomware attackers often use another software program with the name Chaos, Cisco Talos does not believe that the group in question is not connected to his developers, and said they probably exploit the confusion to hide the identity of their members.